THE COUNTRY DOCTOR’S CONFESSION

“I was born in a little town in Languedoc,” the doctor resumed.  “My father had been settled there for many years, and there my early childhood was spent.  When I was eight years old I was sent to the school of the Oratorians at Sorreze, and only left it to finish my studies in Paris.  My father had squandered his patrimony in the course of an exceedingly wild and extravagant youth.  He had retrieved his position partly by a fortunate marriage, partly by the slow persistent thrift characteristic of provincial life; for in the provinces people pride themselves on accumulating rather than on spending, and all the ambition in a man’s nature is either extinguished or directed to money-getting, for want of any nobler end.  So he had grown rich at last, and thought to transmit to his only son all the cut-and-dried experience which he himself had purchased at the price of his lost illusions; a noble last illusion of age which fondly seeks to bequeath its virtues and its wary prudence to heedless youth, intent only on the enjoyment of the enchanted life that lies before it.

“This foresight on my father’s part led him to make plans for my education for which I had to suffer.  He sedulously concealed my expectations of wealth from me, and during the fairest years of my youth compelled me, for my own good, to endure the burden of anxiety and hardship that presses upon a young man who has his own way to make in the world.  His idea in so doing was to instill the virtues of poverty into me—­patience, a thirst for learning, and a love of work for its own sake.  He hoped to teach me to set a proper value on my inheritance, by letting me learn, in this way, all that it costs to make a fortune; wherefore, as soon as I was old enough to understand his advice, he urged me to choose a profession and to work steadily at it.  My tastes inclined me to the study of medicine.

“So I left Sorreze, after ten years of almost monastic discipline of the Oratorians; and, fresh from the quiet life of a remote provincial school, I was taken straight to the capital.  My father went with me in order to introduce me to the notice of a friend of his; and (all unknown to me) my two elders took the most elaborate precautions against any ebullitions of youth on my part, innocent lad though I was.  My allowance was rigidly computed on a scale based upon the absolute necessaries of life, and I was obliged to produce my certificate of attendance at the Ecole de Medecine before I was allowed to draw my quarter’s income.  The excuse for this sufficiently humiliating distrust was the necessity of my acquiring methodical and business-like habits.  My father, however, was not sparing of money for all the necessary expenses of my education and for the amusements of Parisian life.